More Articles

Subscribe to The Dispatch

Already a subscriber?
Enroll in EZPay and get a free gift!
Enroll now.

Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoBROOKE L
aVALLEY |
DISPATCHSlots like those at Hollywood Casino Columbus reward players with happy sounds even when the payout is less than the wager. Researchers found players think they won more often than they did.

By Meeri KimThe Washington Post • Monday July 8, 2013 6:35 AM

Whether you’re in Las Vegas or the small-town casino down the street, slot machines sound more
or less the same: jangly music, the whir of spinning reels, accompanied by loud beeps and
chimes.

A recent study shows that some of those noises can easily fool our brains into thinking that we
won — even when we have unequivocally lost money.

“The way slot machines are designed, sound is a really crucial component of player feedback,”
said lead author and behavioral neuroscientist Michael Dixon of the University of Waterloo in
Ontario.

Because the jubilant sound effects are always tied to wins or even partial losses — “losses
disguised as wins,” Dixon calls them — they act as positive reinforcement and can skew our
perception of lost money.

Say you wager $1 for a single spin on a modern video slot machine. If you hit a winning
combination and win $5, you are rewarded with flashing animations and celebratory winning jingles
made to give you a sense of accomplishment.

In the other extreme, when you win nothing, the machine goes into a quiet state of rest with no
lights or music.

The catch is, even when you win back just a portion of your wager — for instance, 25 cents out
of the dollar you put in — the machine still gives you happy noises and such, similar to when you
really win. So even though you have lost money, you come away feeling like a winner.

Dixon’s team of scientists had 96 gamblers play a slot machine simulator with and without sound
and had it programmed to win exactly 28 times out of 200 spins. Afterward, they asked players how
many times they had won out of 200.

Under both conditions, players overestimated their number of wins, but they did by significantly
more when the sound was on.

Dixon said these games — particularly multiline slots that allow bets on multiple rows and
combinations on a single spin — can be so complex that often people will rely on the machine to
tell them via sound and lights whether they have won or lost. So they will listen for those sounds
as a cue and think that they have won no matter what the actual outcome.

“I don’t think (slots are) a level playing field,” Dixon said.

Dixon, along with computer scientist Kevin Harrigan, also of the University of Waterloo, formed
the Gambling Research Lab after Harrigan obtained the design documents for slot machines. Through
analysis of the underlying math and computer algorithms, they realized how deceptive the machines
can be by pushing irrational behavior and giving players an illusion of control.

In a prior study, they described preprogrammed “near misses,” or what Harrigan calls the “Awww
Shucks Effect.” This happens when, for instance, you spin and two of the reels match up on a
high-paying symbol, and the last reel stops just above or below that same symbol.

Harrigan found that modern machines are weighted to hit near misses far more often than if the
odds were random. It makes players feel as if they almost won a huge jackpot, and that if they play
more, it would happen. In reality, slot machines are engineered to provoke those emotions.

The findings were published online in the
Journal of Gambling Studies on Tuesday.